Gun Gale Online: The Swordswoman — Director's Cut
by A New Username
Summary: Even after they all turned against me, I continued to strive to free myself and everyone trapped here. Even as I became the most wanted criminal in this world, I still fought for justice and the safety and well-being of them all. Because if I did anything less, the ones who died so I could live would have lost their lives in vain. (Rewrite of GGO: The Swordswoman, femKirito, yuri)
1. Prologue: Saving No One, Killing No One

**Author's Note**

 **So, the people have spoken! This rewrite of Gun Gale Online: The Swordswoman will be posted as a separate story. And with how much has been changed in the prologue alone, I'm thinking I'll have to wait until I'm caught up with the original in order to update it with the new versions.**

 **Since TB is the version with no time skips, and this is a rewrite of the original GGO SW, I still have to follow the same general structure. Which means that I still have to start with the current point in time, then flashback to day one of GGO, then flash forward to the present again. But that said, I think I'll be able to pull it off much better than before.**

 **So, this is the prologue. It's meant to replace the opening scene in the original chapter one of GGO SW. I specify that it is a replacement, not a rewrite – because it's a completely different scene, as you could probably guess by the fact that it's about ten times longer. This scene also serves a genuine purpose other than just to introduce Kiriko… well, several purposes, but that's beside the point.**

 **Anyway, I don't have much else to say. These author notes will be replaced upon the rewrite's integration with the main story anyway. Prepare for significant changes as compared to the original. Read.**

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Gun Gale Online: The Swordswoman

Director's Cut Edition

Prologue: Saving No One, Killing No One

"Hey, there, young lady. That's a pretty powerful looking sniper rifle you have on your back. Where'd you get it?" a jaunty male voice called out from my left, right as I neared the center of the map.

 _I don't think there are any female snipers in the lead group… I wonder what's going on, though._

Whatever was happening, it didn't really concern me. If it weren't for where we were, I'd have no reason to pay attention to it whatsoever. After all, in a city, a topic like that would be a pretty standard conversation starter. Hell, I myself had been approached by people using this exact kind of line about my equipment quite a number of times in the past.

But we weren't in a city. This was a dungeon on the eighteenth zone of GGO. A place where making sure you and your party all walked out in one piece was a far greater concern than trying to hit on some girl using her gear as a starting subject. From that standpoint alone, this whole situation changed from a little pathetic to downright dangerous. The only reason someone would bug someone like this in this sort of place would be…

 _Damn. Looks like I can't just walk away from this one._

With a sigh, I turned towards the source of the call. This dungeon, a rocky plains area, was pretty wide, spacious and barren, with the occasional large rock formation cropping up and obstructing one's view. The voice I'd heard seemed to come from behind one such formation – a very large, perfectly round boulder that looked to be three and a half meters tall – about six meters away.

Around this time, a cold, composed female voice responded to the instigator in spectacular fashion. "Really? I know the towns are free game for losers like you to hit on any girl you see, but I'm pretty sure there's an etiquette about doing that kind of thing in the field. This is a dungeon, bozo."

 _Holy crap. This chick's got some real backbone, I'll give her that._

Making sure to limit the noise my black combat boots made, I stealthily dashed up to the boulder, making sure to listen closely for any further developments. Around the time I reached the other side of the rounded, iron-colored rock, my attentiveness was rewarded.

"I'm afraid you've misunderstood me, little girl," the accused replied, uncharacteristically polite for what I'd already discerned he was. "So allow me to be clear with you. I have zero interest in you. All I care about is that big gun of yours that you just used to solo the dungeon boss from such a far distance. And to further specify my intent here, I'll tell you your options. You either give it to me now, or I kill you and take it as my spoils of victory. Either one is fine with me."

 _So that's what happened to my target. I thought it was weird that it wasn't in its usual spawn location…_

My own agenda for being here aside, he wasn't bluffing about killing her. In this game, if a player killed another player, they'd be able to take the victim's equipment. They could choose to keep just one equipped item, all of them, or any number in between.

And in this game, the stakes of player death were about as high as they could get. Having heard his true intent, which I had already kind of guessed, I now had more than enough information to justify intervening. Having resolved myself to action, I pulled a handgun from the harness on my right leg, then tensed my leg muscles for a jump.

Putting my exceptional Agility rating to good use, I leapt with speed and precision, soaring through the air as if propelled by a cannon. As I gained altitude, I absently counted the number of meters high I reached – it was far from a full-force jump, since I was trying to land in a specific spot and thus needed more control than power, but I still managed to top between seven and eight meters before I started to descend.

Up until right before I had jumped, I had also been mapping out where each of them were based on the volume of their voices relative to where I was when I heard them. The bandit was a meter or so away from the boulder, and his target seemed to be backed up against the side of it.

 _A pretty narrow landing zone, but I've dealt with smaller ones before._

"Are you for real right now? You're actually willing to—"

The would-be victim's somewhat unsettled query got cut off midsentence as I crashed into the ground between her and the bandit. The resulting collision with the earth kicked up a cloud of dust that conveniently obscured my new opponent's view, allowing me to point my handgun at his head without him noticing. As for the girl, she let out a quiet squeak when I landed, but otherwise didn't give any sort of reaction, not that she would be able to see me clearly through the debris to react properly.

It would have obscured my view as well if not for a specific passive skill that I had equipped for this zone that allowed me to see heat signatures when my normal vision was rendered useless. It automatically kicked in the moment the dust reached eye level for me, allowing me to see my target through the cloud. He seemed shocked stiff – he didn't even try to get away.

After a few seconds, the veil of earth began to dissipate, and my vision returned to normal. If I were to look at the ground at that point, I knew I would see cracks beneath my feet, and possibly a small dent, caused by the impact of my fall. However, staying focused on my target was much more important than surveying environmental damage. Said target, the bandit, stayed frozen for an entirely different reason than before: my gun was trained on his head. If I were to shoot him there, I would be guaranteed a critical hit. Since he knew nothing of my build, he probably had a reasonable fear that taking such a blow from me could result in his death.

And in his defense, such a fear would be right on the money. I ran a hybrid Strength and Agility build. Which basically meant that I had both incredible speed and staggering power. And beyond that, to call me over-leveled was a bit of an understatement. A single critical hit from me would easily be enough to take him out, judging by his equipment.

With the security of being the one who would make the first move, I had the leisure to really analyze him. His sleek and lightweight equipment, mostly consisting of black leather with metal accents suggested a Dexterity and Agility hybrid build. Which certainly would explain why he wanted to take the girl's sniper rifle, a powerful weapon that relied heavily on one's accuracy, which increased with Dexterity.

That kind of build basically equated to a few simple traits. Very high accuracy and similar speed, but a complete lack of power and paper-thin defense. Even if I hadn't pointed my gun at his head, I most likely would have put him in the yellow or the red with a single shot. It was hard to gauge exactly how much damage he'd take without knowing his level, but the point was, he'd go down remarkably easy.

As for his physical appearance, he was a somewhat tall, almost frighteningly thin young man with long, greasy black hair that seemed to be held back with some sort of product. If I were to guess, he seemed to be in his early to mid twenties. His eyes were a steel-gray color that might have intimidated me if they weren't on such a complete idiot. Nobody in their right minds would actually use a DEX/AGI build on the current frontlines, especially not alone like him. That basically equated to suicide unless you were incredibly good at evasion.

The final thing I took note of was his cursor. It was orange, signifying that he had committed a crime of some sort. Which really made me question what the hell the girl behind me was thinking, considering she'd assumed he was hitting on her in spite of that obvious clue as to his true nature.

 _Well, I've seen enough. Let's get this over with._

"Sorry to interrupt, but I don't really condone thievery or murder," I said in a calm, low, matter of fact voice. "But since I'm a merciful guy, I'll give you a choice. You can either stay here, try to take her gun as planned and find out exactly how much damage a headshot from me will do to you, or you can leave now and live to see another day."

"You… you're…" he stammered, the color draining from his face as he realized my identity.

I nodded, my finger closing in on the trigger. "You are addressing the one and only emperor of GGO. Since you seem to grasp that, I'll assume that means you know what your chances are."

The bandit held his hands up in the air, taking a step back. "I know when to quit. I'm going."

"Good. I like it when the peons are obedient," I replied, my index finger relaxing a little. Otherwise, my aim at him remained the same as before. "Take out a teleporter and get out of my sight. From your menu, by the way – reach inside your jacket and I shoot anyway. Who knows what you could actually be grabbing for, right? I'll also shoot immediately if whatever you materialize doesn't look like a teleportation item, whether it's a gun or the hide of an animal, or anything else."

He did as instructed, opening his menu with his right hand. After a few seconds of his fingers flicking around and tapping on windows that only he could see, a metal sphere with indented, glowing blue grooves separating it into two halves, and segmenting each half into four quadrants, appeared in the air in front of him. He grabbed it as soon as it began to drop to the ground.

Rather than speaking aloud the name of the place he intended to go, he pressed a circular button located at the intersection of two of the blue grooves. His whole avatar began to shimmer with a vibrant blue light, and as it began to intensify, he said one, final parting phrase.

"You got lucky, little girl."

Right after he finished speaking, the blue glow fully engulfed him, then dispersed at once, leaving no trace of the retreated bandit in its wake. He used a feature all teleportation items bought after zone ten automatically had: by pressing the button, he automatically warped to a preset location (which could be changed when viewing the item's properties in one's inventory) without having to say the place's name aloud.

"Damn, I was hoping for him to let his destination slip in fear," I absently remarked as I took a step forward. My business there was just about done. My original target was gone and the girl was safe, so I had no reason to stick around. And due to an utter lack of interest, I didn't even bother turning around to catch a glimpse of the player whose robbery and potential death I just prevented.

I would have just kept walking, if not for her voice, somewhat shaky and unsettled, calling out to me. "Why… why did you save me?"

I paused for a moment to allow her comment to sink in. Then, once the gravity of her misinterpretation of these events hit me, I couldn't help but let out a cynical chuckle. She really had no damn idea what she was saying, did she?

As I slid my gun back into its holster on my leg, I used my other hand to wave back at the girl with the sniper rifle dismissively. "Saved? Don't make yourself sound so important. I just happened to overhear your little exchange, and I didn't feel like walking away from it with your blood on my hands."

I didn't really expect her to understand what I meant by that. Not many people would get it quickly unless they were put through similar trials to my own. What she said next came as no surprise to me.

"This coming from a guy who literally calls himself the emperor of GGO?" her retort was quick and sharp, like what she'd said to the bandit before realizing why he was actually after her. "And besides, if he killed me, it'd be his fault, not yours. You clearly had some other reason to help me."

It was what I had anticipated, but it was still a tad disappointing to hear my suspicions so blatantly confirmed. Though I knew she couldn't see it, I frowned a little at the let down of having to deal with yet another person whose thoughts, conclusions and inferences lacked any true depth.

"I call myself the emperor because my name is literally Kaiser, which means emperor in German, if you were interested in that simple yet vital thing called context," I told her with a sigh and a shake of my head, taking another step forward. "As for my reason for intervening? I guess my way of thinking isn't quite as conveniently simplistic as yours seems to be."

For a good few moments, the silence that hung in the air threatened to crush me with its weight. Even if I'd long since grown used to acting out this persona I'd developed for myself, it still didn't make the threat of alienating yet another person any less hard to deal with. If only I could just act true to my real personality… but I couldn't. That would be too compromising.

When she next replied after about three seconds of what I presumed to be stunned silence, her voice lacked the confidence it had just a few seconds prior. Interestingly enough, that self-assurance got replaced by a thick, overbearing snark. "What do you mean by _that_ , huh?"

Well, even if her words were laced with thorns, they still basically told me to explain myself. Which I had half intended to do regardless of her response, to be perfectly frank. I took a deep breath, then loudly exhaled, as if to imply that her question annoyed me.

"Here's your morals lesson for the day, then," I began, taking another step forward before allowing myself to continue. "If you stand by and let someone die even though you had the power to stop it from happening… it's just as bad as if you'd killed them yourself."

This was one of my core values as a player of GGO. In a game where avatar death makes a player die for real, how could I just turn a blind eye to something like this and then sleep at night? If I had just walked on by and she ended up dying, it would weigh down my conscience for the rest of my life.

But at the same time, I didn't intervene with any sort of noble intent. I wasn't concerned about her safety, I didn't think her life was particularly important, I didn't want to protect her. I just didn't want to add to the count of people that, if I had just done things differently, I could have prevented from dying. I just didn't want yet another person to perish right in front of me.

I raised my right hand up by my head, flashing her a peace sign. "Well, since you apparently already killed the target I came here to beat, I have no reason to stick around. That bandit said you're a sniper, right? In that case, consider joining the lead group. We have a massive shortage of users of your weapon type right now, so having another one would be real useful. But fair warning: if you do join, you'll have the displeasure of dealing with me on a regular basis."

With that, I left the scene at a relaxed pace. She didn't try to stop me or even respond at all, not that it mattered much. I saw another rock formation up ahead, about seven meters away and ten degrees to my right, this one a dark brown color. It was jagged, and it stuck straight up like a spire, the top just managing to cut through the glare of the lowering afternoon sun. I walked up to it, then went around to the other side and leaned against it, safely out of the girl's view.

I gave a great sigh. I'd managed to fool two more people. Two more players now believed my façade. That I was the self-proclaimed emperor of GGO, Kaiser. That I was a male. Even though the deception was necessary for me to continue fighting to clear the game, it was still depressing.

As I leaned against the rock, lost in thought, my mind began to wander back to simpler times. Back when I didn't have to hide my true identity. Back before the game turned into a deathtrap. Back to when I could truly enjoy playing the game.

Back to the launch date of «Gun Gale Online», before this wide awake nightmare began.

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 **Author's Note**

 **Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about this. Part of me doesn't really like it a whole lot, and part of me thinks it's one of the better things I've written, if not one of the best. Quality wise, I kind of pulled out all the stops, though… except for editing, because I didn't really feel like waiting another day to allow me to effectively revise the last few hundred words.**

 **And yeah, Kiriko kind of has a different male alias name now. Because let's be honest, she wouldn't have intentionally chosen to go by Kazuto… since she doesn't have that name IRL and nobody she knows has that name. I made her pick Kaiser because it means "emperor" in German and her IRL name, Kimiko, means "empress child." I made her develop an entirely separate personality for this alias just for the hell of it, because I thought it'd be amusing in scenes with less tension.**

 **Well, let's hear what you all think! Was this significantly better than the original scene it was meant to replace? Do you like the changes I've made so far? Do you think there's anything in this version that I should change? Do you have anything you want me to add in future updates? Share anything like these with me in a review, please!**

 **See you in chapter one!**


	2. I: A Little Project Called GGO

**Author's Note**

 **This totally just happened. This is sort of a rewrite and sort of a replacement of the scene in chapter one that led up to Kimiko logging onto GGO. It's kind of both because almost everything in the original was gutted, but a few key points remain. Most of the nonessential parts of the scene have been completely removed.**

 **By the way, for readers of Transcendent Bonds: this IRL segment is now officially canon (well, my FF-verse's canon) in that as well. It doesn't matter a whole lot right now since most of the things in that story that will call back on this are either a long way off or will be/have been adequately explained when brought up, but I just thought I'd put it out there.**

 **Would you believe that this whole 3600-word chapter is a single scene? And that beyond that, it all takes place in just about seven or eight minutes? To be totally honest, I'm still getting used to the changes in my current writing style. I think that until I figure out exactly how long and short my individual scenes can get, I'll plan to include one scene per new chapter to avoid accidentally making one that tops 8k words and thus becomes a serious ass-pain to find the time to read.**

 **Well, that's about it from me. Read on.**

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Gun Gale Online: The Swordswoman

Director's Cut Edition

Chapter One: A Little Project Called GGO

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"Big sis, I'm going out for kendo practice!"

The call came from the other side of my bedroom door. I had expected something like this – I'd heard the footsteps as the speaker approached my room loud and clear. I knew that my sister, Suguha, was probably waiting there for any response I could give. Even a simple, one-word reply would have been enough to satisfy her.

Despite this, I didn't say a word or even make a sound. My feet, which I had been dragging from side to side across my stained wooden floor before she approached, had come to a complete halt. Consequently, my black leather computer chair stopped swiveling around, matching my complete stillness and silence to the letter.

The door was locked, as it usually was when I was in my room, so she couldn't just come in whenever she felt like it. Her only way of checking on me was to come up to the door and listen for my voice or sounds of movement. And because she was even more painfully straightforward than I was, she didn't even think of not announcing her presence so obviously, so she called out each time, giving me every chance I needed to react like this.

Knowing all of these things and taking full advantage of them, I remained as quiet and still as humanly possible in order to wait her out. I didn't want her to know I was even awake. And since it was Sunday, the idea that I could still be sleeping in was conceivable, even at such a late time as twelve-fifty in the afternoon.

Eventually, my plan worked. After a grand total of ten seconds of waiting, she began speaking again. "I prepared lunch for you. It's in the fridge whenever you get hungry. In case you're asleep, I'll text you about it in a bit. I'll be hanging out with the club after practice, so I won't be back until tonight. See you then, sis…"

I listened to the sound of the footsteps walking away from my room with an ounce of guilt. It wasn't really my style to just give her the silent treatment like this. My reasons for avoiding my sister weren't even her fault – in fact, they had nothing to do with her at all. The only connection they had was that all of my anger, acrimony, and outright hatred was currently directed at her mother…

In other words, my aunt. Suguha and I weren't really siblings, but I still thought of her as one because we were very close growing up. Her mother, on the other hand, could barely hide her resentment of me for most of my life, and I'd picked up on it before I was even toilet trained. By this point, I was pretty sure it was because I reminded her of her sister – my real mom – whom I knew was my grandfather's favorite child. A fact which I knew because the old geezer never shut up about it or how I was the spitting image of my mom.

And due to a string of events at school over the past year, we were having a difference of opinions over our living arrangements. I wanted to move somewhere else, to basically run away from some people I'd accidentally alienated, I did admit, and well… she didn't like that idea. In all fairness, she had the stronger argument on her side, but the way she was handling the problem didn't exactly scream parental figure of the year.

" _I already bailed your sorry ass out of one school system, kid. I'm not doing it again for a reason that isn't even half as valid like this."_

My current personal pick for the next cover model of Punchable Face Magazine actually said that right to my face just the night before. Was I supposed to _thank_ her for doing what any sensible parent would have done in light of the circumstances? Even right after she blatantly told me my current problems weren't important enough to warrant similar actions?

"Go to hell, Midori," I muttered under my breath, making sure to be quiet in case my sister was still in the house.

What a joke. That jealous hussy just wanted to watch me suffer in a way that my real mom, who was dynamic, outgoing and didn't struggle to be social or keep her friends, never did. The only thing I seemed to inherit from my mother was her physique, from the well developed figure to the incredibly short height. My personality, intelligence and thought patterns? They basically came straight from my dad with no alterations, as much as I hated it most of the time.

This was why I didn't want to talk to Suguha at the moment. I couldn't let it slip that I was fighting with her mom. Or even worse, let it slip that her mom was my aunt, and that we were actually cousins, which I had tactfully kept hidden from her for the past five years. So until my emotions cooled down a little, I had decided to hold off on speaking with my sister as much as possible.

 _BZZ-BZZ_

This noise, coupled with a subtle shaking feeling coming from the inside pocket of my dark gray denim jacket, interrupted my thoughts to notify me that I'd received an email. A single buzz would have been a text, and three of them would have been an app notification, but the presence of only two, along with the current time, told me exactly what to expect.

Rather than get out my phone, I swung my computer chair around to face my desk, where two large, high-resolution monitors, both blackened due to inactivity, stood next to each other in a way that made them look like a very obtuse angle from a geometry problem. Under the desk, there was another surface, attached to the one above it with a sliding mechanism. It was currently rolled under the desk, hiding what I kept there.

I slid it out, and a keyboard and computer mouse appeared over my bare frightfully pale legs, still slender yet toned from my kendo days. Since I almost never went outside except to go home, to school, or to certain stores, my skin looked significantly closer to that of a white American than that of a Japanese girl. In fact, my own family members all had considerably darker skin than I did, and they weren't even super huge on outdoor exercise. When boys around me at school thought I couldn't hear, many of them described it as a charm point… and coupled with the other such points they'd discuss, I usually had to fight back a shudder of revulsion and the urge to slap them across the face. Knowing my bizarre physical strength, I could very possibly snap their necks by accident if I actually went through with a slap like that.

Shaking my head to clear it of such morbid thoughts, I shifted the mouse, and both monitors lit up, showing two different screens. The cursor moved to the one on the right, which showed my work email inbox. It had just updated to show the new mail I'd received. The sender was just the person I'd been expecting to hear from around this point. I clicked on it, and it popped up in a little miniature window on the side of the screen.

 _Sender: Kayaba-Sensei_

 _Subject: A Quick Notification_

 _I trust that your copy of GGO came safely in the mail. I wanted to inform you that upon successfully logging in for the first time, your account will be that of a normal player. Your developer status has been suspended to make it fair on the other players._

That was all it said. I'd been corresponding with him since shortly before summer vacation, and to date, he'd never sent a message longer than a mid-sized paragraph. He was very brief and to the point, always conveying everything he needed to and nothing more.

The honorific I used to refer to him, sensei, was purely sarcastic. He was hands down the smartest person I'd ever met, but as much as I'd tried to learn from him about his craft, the man had never taught me a damn thing I didn't already know. Sometimes I got the distinct impression that he avoided telling me anything new just to screw with me, but he was more the serious type, so it didn't really add up.

The game he mentioned, which he abbreviated to GGO, was a little project he'd been working on for quite some time. It was an MMORPG, and the first of its kind on the particular hardware it used. Back around the time summer vacation was about to start, Kayaba scouted me as a beta tester.

He found me through my blog, where I built and sold custom high end computers, often with modified operating systems to fit the recipient, and had quite the reputation for being one of the best and most reasonably priced in my field throughout all of Japan. I also did computer repairs, upgrades, reviewed new parts shortly after they came out, and gave advice to people looking to build one themselves, which only added to my popularity.

Still, my reputation aside, it never really added up how he managed to find me. After all, I was a computer nerd, albeit a multifaceted and successful one, and he was a revolutionary quantum physicist who happened to have an interest in the gaming industry. Realistically speaking, our paths shouldn't have normally crossed. Yet he contacted me through my blog's dedicated email, asking to meet up, and after asking me a few really odd questions, he offered to let me take the last slot of GGO's closed beta, which would take place over summer vacation.

As was probably obvious, I accepted, and he gave me a developer account to allow me to see all of the under-the-hood functions of the game. I also had a direct contact line to the programming staff in case I noticed anything that needed adjusting, which I had admittedly used a few times to iron out some particularly big problems.

To be perfectly honest, I was glad that he had decided to take my developer account away. Considering I still vividly remembered everything I'd learned from it, suspending it wouldn't exactly remove my unfair advantage from a knowledge standpoint, but at the very least, I'd have an equal standing with the rest of the players. I didn't like being special in ways I could avoid it.

Deciding that by this point, there was no way that my sister was still in the house, I clicked the reply button, entered a new subject header, and began typing out my response. I kept it short and to the point, as in tone with that of the message he sent to me as I could muster.

 _Subject: Too late for fairness_

 _Considering my memory is eidetic, the damage has kind of been done in terms of giving me an unfair advantage. But I'm still grateful for the gesture, since I'd like to appear as normal as possible, and having a purple "Dev" next to my player name wouldn't exactly make that easy._

 _The game got here just fine, by the way. You did send it first class, after all. I've already got the cartridge in my Nerve Gear, which I set up for use again yesterday, so at this point, I'm just waiting for the hour to turn so I can play._

After finishing, I hit send, and the message composition window disappeared. It occurred to me that most people in my shoes probably would have been total kiss-asses. However, it never really occurred to me to treat him as someone special, even if he most certainly was such. Because at the end of the day, whatever his reasoning was, he was the one who sought me out to play his game, not the other way around. So at the very least, this meant he held me in some regard from the start. I got his attention by doing what I normally did, so I never saw any reason to change my behavior.

Finished with my correspondence for the moment, my eyes turned to the web page open on my left monitor. It was a live countdown to GGO's launch time, down to the thousandth of a second. It was telling me I had about five minutes to kill before the server went online – enough time to take care of the remaining preparations.

I swiveled the chair around to face my room and took survey of the task that lay before me. The floor wouldn't exactly count as spotless, but it was very well organized. Anything that took up space on the floor was properly packaged or put away – nothing was just lying around messily.

However, when my eyes moved about a meter up, I found a completely different picture before me. In the center of the bedroom, I had three card tables set up. Not a single one of them had any spot with even ten centimeters of free space in any direction. Almost all of the surface area was taken up by ongoing projects – at least five half built computers stood out like mountainous islands among everything else strewn about the tables, each surrounded by an amalgam of parts that still needed to be installed.

I probably didn't have time to finish any of them or make any room, so I turned to the right, coming face to face with my bed, the entrance to my room, and my dark violet walls that I got painted shortly after moving in. I had wanted to paint them black or dark gray, but my aunt vetoed both of those, telling me that having a room those colors would only make my depression worse, which she said would defeat the whole purpose of moving to a new house. So I settled for a very deep purple, since I'd been told all my life that my gray eyes would look violet in the right lighting.

My bedroom door was a bit atypical for a Japanese household, but not incredibly rare – rather than having a sliding door, I had a European-styled wooden door, with a bronze-colored metal knob that could lock from the inside. This was an absolute necessity from my standpoint, and it was honestly the reason we chose this house specifically – its doors locked and if they were locked, you couldn't just force them open.

My queen-sized bed had a memory foam mattress that I didn't have when we bought the house. Instead, I bought it a few months later, as the first purchase I made in full with my own earnings from the computer business I'd started. However, at this point, one could not see the mattress, because of the presence of plain navy blue sheets, leopard skin-patterned blankets that I'd bought on a whim, and three fully built laptops that were currently situated on the bed. The two at the foot, which I kept there with no worries since my feet didn't even reach that far down even when I stretched out, were ones I'd built for the purpose of selling that I still needed to modify the operating systems of.

The third laptop, currently charging on my extremely fluffy pillow, was what I currently used for running my blog, making purchases, and the occasional gaming session in bed. This was what needed to move – in order to play the game that was about to go online, I'd need to lie down in bed and make use of the pillow currently occupied by my portable computer.

I stood up, walking over to my bed and grabbing my laptop with both hands. Setting it on the floor for the moment, I then turned to my large, whitish, oak wood nightstand, my eyes zeroing in on one particular device sitting next to the lamp. It was a streamlined helmet colored a dark blue, with an emerald green visor in front to cover one's eyes and a long, blue cord stretching out of the back end, the color of which matched the helmet. That cord was already plugged into the wall – I'd set it up the night before.

I grabbed the helmet and set it on my pillow, the pillowcase of which matched the leopard print of my blanket. I made sure to be as careful as humanly possible when setting it down and moving the cord – if I somehow accidentally damaged it at this stage, I wouldn't be able to play GGO for days, possibly weeks. These things were sold out in stores all across the nation.

After making sure everything was perfectly fine, I grabbed my laptop from the floor and set it in the spot on my nightstand where the helmet had once been, with notably less care than I'd used just before. That damn computer was durable as hell, so I didn't need to worry about it nearly as much.

I cast another glance to the live countdown. Three minutes left before I could start playing. As much as I hated adding to the stereotype, I had to admit that the passage of time seemed excruciatingly slow now that I was paying close attention to it. I didn't want to be even a second late in logging in, so I couldn't really leave my room, and there was nothing left to do inside it that wouldn't take more time than I had.

With nothing left to do, I sat down on my bed, deciding to just get ready a few minutes early. I swung my bare legs onto the bed, absently noting that I'd gone the entire day so far without changing or putting on any clothes aside from my jacket, which was more of a comfort than anything else. I'd just kept wearing what I'd slept in, like usual – this time, a dark gray shirt and a set of black lace underwear that I'd received from an asshole family member as my fourteenth birthday present the month before. While the message that such a gift sent was irredeemably insensitive and somewhat cruel to me, I'd taken to wearing them anyway, because no matter how much I hated that idiot for giving them to me, they were certainly very comfortable, and they were also my favorite color.

The fact that they were comfy was weird in and of itself, because they were lace, and therefore not supposed to be as comfortable as what I normally wore. I'd done a little researching shortly after receiving them and I'd found that the brand my family member had chosen was actually really high end, and that it typically made underwear with both fashion and comfort in mind.

Knowing I'd probably just killed another thirty seconds, I made a grab for the helmet on my pillow. Turning it a little as it rose through the air, I gently slid it on my head, then shifted around a little on the bed before inevitably lying down. I didn't even bother getting under the covers – though winter was quickly approaching, I still didn't feel cold. Everyone in my family seemed to be remarkably temperature insensitive, to the point that changes in temperature that weren't at least five degrees would go completely unnoticed unless we constantly monitored the thermostat.

As I lay there waiting, my eyes wandered around the visor of the helmet I wore. There were two displays, both very small, showing across the whole thing. Those displays would not be visible at all unless one was wearing the helmet – they appeared on the visor using the same technology that GGO ran on. It directly displayed the images to one's brain as pre-interpreted visual data, so there was no need for the displays to actually be on the visor.

On the far right, in the upper corner, there was a battery icon. Mine indicated that it was both fully charged and plugged in, the latter detail being shown by a lightning bolt in the middle of the battery. Which made sense, considering it had been charging all night, and even before that, I hadn't used the thing since GGO's beta, where I always kept it fully charged and ready for action.

The other display, situated in the upper right corner, told the current time in text about the size of the battery icon. It only had hours and minutes no seconds, and it was a twenty-four hour clock, rather than a twelve hour one. As I looked at it, the readout said 12:59. All this super slow-paced thinking had worked marvelously for killing time. Although how I actually managed the feat of slowing down my normally lightspeed thought processes was a bit of a mystery. I knew I could do it on command, but I'd never figured out how it worked.

I had less than a minute to go. This was the most excited I'd felt in months – back in the beta, I'd been positively addicted to GGO, and I'd spent more time playing it than I did anything else, to the point that I'd forgone meals and sleep regularly to keep going. Even though I wouldn't be able to put the same amount of time into it now, during the school year, I still planned to play as much as possible for someone with my schedule.

At long last, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting, the clock turned to 13:00. Filled with joy and anticipation, as soon as the numbers on the readout changed, I uttered a single phrase, just two English words. The words that, unbeknownst to me, would be the catalyst of an event that would change my life forever.

"Link start!"

* * *

 **Author's Note**

 **For those of you who don't read every work in the Swordswoman series, a lot of the stuff in this chapter may seem new, different or surprising. But I can assure you that the only thing in this chapter that is completely new is the fact that Kayaba and Kiriko started corresponding after they met in real life. Everything else has already been explained in such works as Transcendent Bonds and Sword Art Online: The Strongest Warrior.**

 **This chapter was really me just cementing everything that I'd already said before into the series permanently. Since this rewrite will likely be the final iteration of GGO SW, I want to make sure it includes all the relevant things that have been referenced in later installments in the series for continuity reasons.**

 **That said, for those of you wondering how long the day one arc will last… I'm expecting it to be at least five chapters if I average one scene per installment. Give or take a chapter either way. So for those of you who aren't interested in seeing the changes I've made to day one of Gun Gale Online, check back around chapter six (not counting the prologue) to pick back up approximately where the prologue left off. And if that's not chapter six, then in the author notes of chapter six, I'll tell you where it does start.**

 **Unlike said prologue, this chapter has been edited by my cover artist, the amazing ForteDragon. Thanks so much! While we're on the subject of my cover artist, she fairly recently released a beautiful Asuna/Yuuki drabble (which is chapter two of her fic titled "Asuna x Yuuki Drabbles"), which you can view in my community. I don't even like the pairing and I was moved by that, so if you like the ship even a little, I urge you to check it out!**

 **On a final note, I kind of ended up posting this the day after the US election day. I honestly hated all the candidates, and even though I did vote, I felt like I was picking from the lesser of four evils (even the third party candidates were bad)** **… but the result I woke up to at like three in the morning was a little surprising, to say the least. Now the guy that the media has been blasting all year has been elected to the highest office of my nation. These next four years are gonna be totally nuts for the US, I'll bet.**

 **Anyway, please leave a review that tells me at least one good thing and at least one thing that needs work! I don't ask for a whole lot…**

 **See you next chapter! Get ready to see the world through the eyes of our favorite guy to mess with, the one, the only, the reddest head of hair in GGO, Klein!**


	3. II: New Games, New Friends

**Author's Note**

 **I actually did it. I wrote a chapter from a male first person perspective. Holy shit, I wrote a Klein chapter. Don't expect another one for a little bit. The earliest you'll see another installment from Klein's perspective is the hand mirror scene, because damn, did this drain the hell out of me.**

 **My scene length seems to have stabilized now. This chapter is two scenes, both of which are a minimum of a thousand words (the first one is 1400, the second one is 2100). Not bad, not bad. Also much more manageable than having single scenes that span over 3000 words.**

 **Anyway, I tried my best to make this chapter seem like it was narrated straight from Klein himself… but I think I probably fucked that up in the second scene. I might go back and retroactively edit it to be more Klein-like if people say I should, but I'm just gonna go ahead and release it to get people's opinions first.**

 **That said, go ahead and read… you're only gonna get at maximum three scenes written from first person Klein in this whole story (he's only a primary character in the day one arc, so beyond that, his scenes will be in third person), so you'd best soak it up while you can if you like it.**

* * *

Gun Gale Online: The Swordswoman

Director's Cut Edition

Chapter Two: New Games, New Friends

* * *

Upon finally logging onto Gun Gale Online for the first time, after spending a full ten minutes carefully designing my avatar and waiting on the server to go up, the first thing that caught my eye was a person.

Yeah, that's right. Instead of staring in awe of the entire virtual world around me like I'd expected to, my eyes zeroed in on one specific person on autopilot the moment the world materialized around me. I noticed the guy over everyone and everything else because, unlike the mass amounts of people spawning all around us, he quite literally hit the ground running, making a beeline for somewhere that only he knew.

It hit me in a flash. This guy definitely knew exactly where he was going, in spite of the fact that this was day one, minute one of the official service of GGO. If he already knew this place, that could only mean one thing.

 _That guy's a beta-tester!_

As soon as my mind made the connection, I bolted after him, running as hard as I could to keep up. I'd made my avatar taller than he did his, so my strides were longer, but he had the advantage of familiarity on his side. If I slowed down for even a moment, I'd lose him in the ever-growing crowd, or around a corner or something.

We made it to the edge of the city's plaza from somewhere near the center after a full two minutes of running. I hadn't managed to catch up by much, so he still hadn't noticed me tailing him. If it weren't for all the people showing up, I would have been a lot closer, possibly enough to call out to him. But they kept spawning in flashes of theatrical blue light right in front of me, damn it!

Of course, the beta player dealt with this problem, too. But if one appeared right in front of him, he'd just dart to the side with a swift twirl and keep moving forward by slamming and pivoting his feet in a way that betrayed many long hours of training and experience. I had to admit, it was impressive how he never managed to slow down or run into anyone the whole time, but it only made things harder for me.

Luckily, once we left the center of town for a wide, blacktop-paved city street, the number of people popping up like flowers in spring dropped to zero. It seemed like all the new players spawned in the plaza, no matter what. I certainly didn't mind, though – less people meant less obstacles to slow me down, and I needed every advantage I could get!

Suddenly, he slowed down, then darted into an alleyway to the left. It took me a full five seconds to get to the corner, and by the time I did, worried that I'd already lost him, I barely even slowed down as I turned and dashed into the alley—

Only for something small and blunt to hit me right in the nose, forcing me backwards from a full sprint until I fell flat on my ass. My eyes closed tightly as the pain hit me like a tidal wave, and for a moment I wondered just what the hell the developers were thinking when they incorporated pain into a video game. Even if it wasn't as bad as it would have been in real life, that still hurt, damn it!

I looked up in search of the source, preparing to either shout or punch an inanimate object for hurting me. However, what I found made me feel significantly less, shall we say… primed for battle.

"You know, if you're going to bother stalking someone relentlessly," the male said in a calm, cool and collected voice, the fist he'd used to stop me in my tracks still held out in front of himself. "You could at least try to be a little stealthy about it, _Mohawk_. There are literally reflective surfaces all over the damn city, did you seriously expect me not to notice someone with an attention whore hairstyle like you right away?"

 _Attention whore?! I just picked it because designing my avatar was taking too long, damn it!_

What a misunderstanding! This did not look good at all. I needed to come up with something to diffuse the tension and get rid of the potential for a conflict… "T-that wasn't really my intention… you were running so fast… and I wanted to talk to you after I'd closed the distance, not before."

His face, which had been frozen into an icy glare up to that point, softened into one of skepticism. That was better than before, at least. Skepticism was a far cry from the outright contempt I'd seen mere moments before. Good, we were making progress here.

"Okay, let's assume I believe you," he replied with the same tone as before, if maybe a tiny bit less… sharp, I guess? His hand fell loosely to his side as his fingers unclenched. "What do you want from me? Why go to such lengths to chase me down?"

I rubbed my still-aching nose with my hand as I slowly rose to my feet. At this point, I noticed that there was a clear height difference between the two of us. My avatar's height was about average for what you'd expect a Japanese teenage guy, which was the age I was aiming for in design. Maybe a smidge taller. But this dude was at least a head shorter than me – he came right up to my neck.

I looked down at him and spoke with a shrug of my shoulders. "You didn't take any time to admire the scenery of the world's first VRMMO. You just booked it the moment your feet hit the ground after you spawned, and you seemed to know where you were going. I figured you had to be one of the beta testers, so I decided to try and get some pointers on how to play the game."

For a few fleeting moments, I saw an expression of genuine internal conflict dance across his sort of girlish-looking face. The longer it went on, the more I worried he was about to turn me down. But then, right as I was about to apologize and leave, he smiled uneasily, running a hand through his long, black bangs that seemed to strategically part in a way that kept them from getting in his eyes.

"All right, you win," he told me, shrugging his shoulders as his hair fell back into place. "I'll give you Kiriko's personal tutorial. Full disclosure: it's kind of a sink or swim type of tutoring."

The name he dropped there struck a familiar chord, but I dismissed the possibility of this being the same person almost right away. The Kiriko I was thinking of was a popular blogger and high-end computer builder who did now-viral reviews of the Nerve Gear and this game's beta. They could be the same person, but… well, the blogger was a girl, so if this guy were actually _that_ Kiriko, then it would mean she cross-played. And doing that in a game where your avatar actually had private parts like this one would be…

"You know, you could show a little emotion instead of just spacing out," he said, waving a hand in front of my face.

The gesture snapped me back to virtual reality, and I rubbed the back of my neck with my hand as a nervous smile came to my lips. "Sorry… your name just reminded me of someone. Probably just a coincidence, though. Anyway, thanks a million! My name's Klein, by the way."

Kiriko nodded, turning around and beginning to walk off. "Gotcha. Introductions are over, so let's get going. First stop: a particular weapon shop I'm familiar with. You can choose a gun to start out with, but it's best to have two different kinds of weapons on hand to get around type resistances."

As I followed after my new teacher, I couldn't help but get the unshakable feeling that something was very wrong. Something that I knew would happen, something that gave me the sensation of a word on the tip of my tongue until we reached our destination and the distraction of making my first in-game purchase shook the feeling I'd later look back on as a warning out of my mind.

* * *

"Oh, come the hell on!" I shouted at the top of my lungs as the tenth bullet in my clip completely missed my target… for the tenth goddamn time in a row.

The thing I unloaded an entire clip on was some giant wolf-looking thing with black fur. Kiriko called them «Predator Eaters» when we encountered them, which made sense, because they looked big enough to tear a real life wolf to shreds with little effort.

They were big and frightening enough to be genuinely scary, even at the sixteen meter distance I currently had on this one, at least from what the distance check function said when I took aim. I could feel my body getting amped up – hell, I could even hear and feel my heart pounding, even though it was just a game. The thing just looked too… realistic, and it freaked me out a bit.

Just before I grabbed for another clip to try again, something unexpected happened. I heard a loud, familiar noise from my right, and a red spot briefly appeared on the forehead of my target, appearing to leak small red fragments into the air as if bleeding. The whole body began to turn into a bright red, glassy color to match the original spot, and suddenly became more angularly shaped than before. Finally, one second after the sound rang through my ears, the enemy I'd wasted an entire clip of ammo on shattered into red, orange and yellow fragments that scattered into the light breeze.

I looked over to my teacher for the day, the beta player with a girl's name who'd greeted me by punching me in the face for following him relentlessly. In his outstretched left hand, he held the basic semi-automatic handgun he'd chosen to start the game with, a black plastic model objectively inferior to my own store-bought metal one, his index finger still squeezing the trigger from the shot he'd just taken. He seemed unnaturally calm, almost as if what he'd done was absolutely nothing at all to him.

"Sorry I had to step in for you, but that was just getting sad," he remarked, pulling his finger off the trigger and lowering his arm until it hung limply at his side. He turned to face me with a no-nonsense face, and I knew I was in for it. "That was the weakest and slowest moving monster in the whole zone. One hit from the starter handgun on a part of the main body or head is enough to take it out, and you won't even aggro the thing until you actually hit it. It may look big and tough, but it's as tame as they get."

I nodded my head, discarding my emptied clip and reaching for the next one on my belt. "I know, I know… you said all that when we found it. It's just… it looks scary as hell, okay? And I can't line up my shots properly with that circle thing, so they all miss!"

For a brief moment, a flash of recognition flared up in Kiriko's eyes, and he nodded his head as I clicked my second clip into place in my gun. "Those are both the same problem. That circle that appears in your vision and tells you where you'll hit a second after your finger touches the trigger – it's called the «Bullet Circle» – it fluctuates and moves according to your emotional state and heartrate."

"What do you mean?" I asked, feeling kind of eager now that he seemed to be explaining things.

"For example… if you're perfectly calm and your heart is at a normal pace, then it will be smaller, fluctuate through its size range slower, and move around according to where you're pointing your gun," he explained, raising his gun arm again and pointing a ways to his right.

I looked over to where he seemed to be aiming. Way off in the distance – so far, I could barely even see them in any detail – were two more Predator Eaters. We had to be at least fifty or sixty meters away from them. The distance was great enough to make me expect him to completely miss.

But he didn't seem to be deterred by this range in the slightest. "Using a gun with that state of mind and basic aiming…"

 _Bang! … Bang!_

Two for two. He took a shot at each of the enemies in the group and hit them both on what must have been their heads, making each of them shatter into fragments like the one he'd killed for me. The first hit was right between the eyes, from what I could tell when squinting, and the second was on the long snout, right on the black nose. What made this stand out even more was the short amount of time between shots – he'd readjusted his trajectory and fired a second time at precisely when the first one exploded into an array of bright color, meaning he'd only taken a single second to aim at his new target.

His arm lowered, and he turned back to me once again. "… You can effectively quadruple your effective firing range as compared to if you're in a state of emotional chaos and your heart is pounding. My maximum range for hitting targets effectively with this gun is about eighty meters. Although I will admit, in by the time I get to that point, I can't hit precise spots on a target smaller than fifteen centimeters with a hundred percent reliability."

I just gaped. I had not seen that coming at all. Even if what he was saying was all true… something told me that he was at the head of the learning curve, even for beta players. Hitting two small targets from at least fifty meters away with precise accuracy and such quick aiming speed from one target to the next… it struck me as way more than what a normal player would be capable of.

"You're amazing!" I shouted, overcome with astonishment. "How did you get to be that good? What's your secret?!"

He used his free right hand to rub the back of his neck as he gave what seemed like a forced smile. "I had… a really good training partner, to say the least. One that helped me weed out everything that didn't work until I had only the strongest tactics and moves at my disposal. But we're not here to talk about me. Now it's your turn."

He pointed over to a spot to our left, a notable distance away, where another Predator Eater was slowly prowling about in a large, meandering circle. At that point, I noticed that in the center of his walking pattern, there was a mid-sized hole surrounded by bare earth, unlike the grassy terrain of most of the area, as if something had burrowed a tunnel into the ground there ages ago. It almost seemed like the enemy was circling the hole, waiting for something to come out.

"Take that one out in one shot with a calm state of mind. Once we kill all the Predator Eaters in this «Hunting Fields» area, more lucrative mobs will start spawning from those burrows for a while. One of their less grind intensive rare drops is a nice handgun that both of us could put to good use," Kiriko explained in his factual, sort of overly detailed way that I was quickly growing used to.

 _Calm state of mind…_

I repeated this over and over in my head like a mantra as I slowly aimed my dark gray metal handgun at the head of the beast my teacher told me to kill. As my finger neared the trigger, the distance check function that he'd made me turn on before we left town displayed a number on the top-center of my field of vision: twenty-five meters.

As my focus returned to my massive, wolf-like target, I felt my heartrate begin to increase. I repeated the mantra with greater fervor, to no avail – it didn't help me keep calm at all. Just as I was about to give up, Kiriko's voice called out from beside me.

"If it helps, try to laser focus in on the body part you want to hit until you lose sight of the enemy as a whole," he advised, apparently perceptive enough to notice my problem. "Not only will that make it easier to calm down and stay that way, it also promotes good aiming habits for non-humanoid opponents."

I nodded silently, his advice giving me the hope I needed to keep trying. I did my best to stop looking at the whole Predator Eater currently facing me from twenty-some meters away, instead looking at the spot right between its eyes just above the long, toothy snout. From this distance, it was hard to make out exact details, but not impossible.

Just like he said, my heartrate began to go back to normal, and I felt less afraid overall. I put my finger on the trigger, and the Bullet Circle appeared in my vision a moment later – it seemed completely different from the one I saw nonstop when I wasted my first clip. This one looked less erratic, and though it still got bigger and smaller over the course of a couple seconds, it didn't get half as big, and it seemed to be going in slow motion compared to before.

I adjusted my aim a bit – my original one had been away from my target zone by a few degrees – and the Bullet Circle aligned itself with my movements, precisely and without any unpredictable leaps halfway across my field of vision like before. If it was like this… then I could do it! I squeezed my finger, and—

 _Bang!_

My shot hit the oversized wolf right on the nose. It was a few degrees off, but it was still a good, solid hit, as the resulting shattering of the enemy into brightly colored fragments proved. Part of me felt elated that I'd hit it on the first try, but another part of me kind of felt bad that I missed my mark.

"Good going," my teacher praised, his voice getting louder as I assumed he moved closer in. "If you can do it like that every time, then we shouldn't need to go back to town for ammo— you look disappointed. What's up?"

I turned to him and rubbed my neck nervously. I hadn't expected him to pick up on my emotions so easily… this guy was more perceptive than I gave him credit for. "It's just… I was aiming for the spot between his eyes, but I hit his snout instead."

His eyes flashed in understanding, but then he held up his right index finger as if trying to point something out. "That wasn't you. You were probably too focused to notice, but it moved its head up a little right as you took the shot. If it hadn't done that, you would have hit the spot you were aiming for."

The unsatisfied feelings that had been running around inside me vanished without a trace as I heard this. I actually did it completely right on the first try! Elation surged up at my newfound sense of accomplishment.

"Great, so I didn't screw up!" I exclaimed, holding out my hand in the air in front of my teacher. He held his out in turn, and we slapped them together in a high five with enough force to make my hand sting a little. "Let's keep going and get that gun you talked about!"

Kiriko's lips curled up into a small but genuine smile as he nodded along. "That's the spirit. Let's split up and take out all the Predator Eaters as quickly as possible so we can have some new rare drop weapons before sunset. If you can keep doing what you just did, you should have no problems on your own. And since we're in a party, we'll both get EXP and credits from every kill, so it's more efficient to fight separately."

"You got it! I'll take the north and west sections of the area, and you take the south and east sections," I replied with an enthusiastic nod. My teacher and, now, partner, seemed a bit taken aback by my sudden command, but just before I walked it back, he nodded.

"Sounds good. Let's get to it!"

With our combined yet spread out efforts, we killed all the Predator Eaters in the Hunting Fields area in just under half an hour. We both got the rare drop handguns from the smaller yet higher leveled coyote mobs that spawned from the burrows and even got to test them out well before the sun began to set in the sky.

Thinking back, this was probably the time in the game where I felt the most unrestrained joy. But who could blame me? At the time, the reality I believed in – that this was just a really fun, immersive video game to blow my weekends and days off on – hadn't been shattered yet.

* * *

 **Author's Note**

 **What do you think? Does the second scene sound less Klein-like than the first? Do I need to fix it? Or is it fine as is?**

 **To be honest, this chapter was hell to produce. I'm so used to writing from the perspective of lesbians, whether they're consciously aware of it or not, that I've almost forgotten how to write dudes. Which is inherently weird when you consider that I am, physically, a male myself (although mentally I'm kind of gender neutral – I feel more closely aligned with old school computers than actual human genders). Although I'm about as far off from normal as you can get… both in personality and in clinical history.**

 **Anyway, I didn't edit this or make ForteDragon do it (she's on vacation, and I finished this while she was asleep anyway), so there are probably a lot of things to point out. Go ahead and point out any problems/errors you find so I can edit them out as quickly as possible.**

 **I hope you liked it, and I hope you'll keep reading this story as it continues to slowly catch up to the original! Although right now, it seems to actually be moving slower than GGO SW's original version** **… I assume it'll close the gap a bit more when I write Kiriko (which I'll be doing next), since she's kind of an instinctive "what would I/my sister do" character and is therefore easier to write.**


	4. III: Warning Signs

**Author's Note**

 **Yeah, I know it's been a while since I updated this story – truth be told, I've actually more or less had this chapter done for a while. Most of the draft was written for a different story that I never ended up posting which utilized the same Kiriko which exists in this story, personality, background and all, but it was pretty simple to modify it to fit this story as well. In fact, to be perfectly frank, half of the completed draft for that other story's installment was written for this story specifically, and I had to edit all the GGO stuff out to make it fit that story before finishing the rest of it.**

 **I've essentially taken summer vacation off from writing on FFN, primarily because of a bunch of really heavy shit that happened IRL kept me away from it for long enough that a wave of inertia formed and made it impossible to focus on writing in general. Let's just say that if you compared what I thought I knew two years ago to what I actually know now, everything has completely flipped around. My mother had been lying to me and manipulating me for nineteen years, and accusing my dad of doing to her all the horrible things she did to him. The only reason I didn't catch on was because I chose to ignore the warning signs, but after moving in with dad, I became more and more aware of the fact that things were not as I'd been raised to believe they were.**

 **But I'd rather not make this note any longer, so I'll just cut it off here (I could go on for days talking about the sheer depth at which I have been mindfucked by this Matrix level hidden truths shit these past few months, but not everyone would want to read that much about it, and the people who would are weirder than me). See you at the bottom!**

* * *

Gun Gale Online: The Swordswoman

Director's Cut Edition

Chapter Three: Warning Signs

 _Kiriko's lips curled up into a small but genuine smile as he nodded along. "That's the spirit. Let's split up and take out all the Predator Eaters as quickly as possible so we can have some new rare drop weapons before sunset. If you can keep doing what you just did, you should have no problems on your own. And since we're in a party, we'll both get EXP and credits from every kill, so it's more efficient to fight separately."_

 _"You got it! I'll take the north and west sections of the area, and you take the south and east sections," I replied with an enthusiastic nod. My teacher and, now, partner, seemed a bit taken aback by my sudden command, but just before I walked it back, he nodded._

 _"Sounds good. Let's get to it!"_

 _With our combined yet spread out efforts, we killed all the Predator Eaters in the Hunting Fields area in just under half an hour. We both got the rare drop handguns from the smaller yet higher leveled coyote mobs that spawned from the burrows and even got to test them out well before the sun began to set in the sky._

 _Thinking back, this was probably the time in the game where I felt the most unrestrained joy. But who could blame me? At the time, the reality I believed in – that this was just a really fun, immersive video game to blow my weekends and days off on – hadn't been shattered yet._

* * *

Because of the walls that divided the various zones of GGO, sunset happened a bit earlier than it would in real life. However, the experience was no less beautiful than the real thing – if anything, it was even more so, especially in the first zone. The setting sun cast a full rainbow of colors upon the evening sky that almost looked like an aurora. In the game lore, this supposedly happened because of specific chemicals that had been introduced into the atmosphere through man's pollution which the plants could not purify.

The first zone was supposed to be a post-apocalyptic earth, where man created sentient machines that drove the human race off the planet and drove the ones who stayed nearly to extinction. You could see it in the monsters that populated the place – almost all of them were machine types, and those that weren't were difficult to encounter because they lived in hiding. It painted a grim picture of a future we had yet to decisively avoid in the real world.

But at times like these, in spite of what it represented, this world seemed amazingly radiant. No one could deny the splendor of this rainbow sunset that seemed so ethereal yet also so amazingly _real_. It couldn't happen in reality, yet it looked so realistic that you'd almost think the developers had based it off of a real phenomena.

I'd seen this dozens of times in the beta, and yet it still instilled a sense of awe in me that was hard to dispel. But compared to the person sitting next to me, I probably hardly felt anything at all – this was his first day playing, his first time seeing this spectacle. He must have had a stronger reaction to it than I did.

"No matter how many times I see something incredible like this," he spoke, almost as if on cue. I turned down to face him in the span of his short pause in speech. "I still can't believe that this is inside the game."

I shrugged my shoulders as he looked up at me for a comment. "Even if you use the word 'inside,' it's not like our souls were sucked in. Our brain is just seeing, hearing and feeling instead of our eyes and ears… with the signals that the «Nerve Gear» is sending."

Klein pouted like a little kid. It seemed that a dose of realism wasn't the response that he was looking for. Not that I would have said something else had I known what he actually wanted to hear, but still.

"You might be used to it by now, but this is my first «Full Dive»!" he exclaimed, extending his hands in an elated gesture. His left hand bumped against my upper right leg. "The guy who made it has got to be the smartest guy in history! I'm so glad I was born in this era!"

"You're exaggerating…"

But even if I wouldn't admit it aloud, I agreed with the basis of what he was trying to say. The hardware that drove this VRMMORPG called Gun Gale Online – the Nerve Gear – was amazing on every level. As a gaming interface, its basic structure differed drastically from everything that came before it.

Unlike the old style hardware such as flat screen monitors or handheld controllers, this device only had a single interface: a streamlined helmet that covered your whole head and a good portion of one's face. Inside, there were numerous signal transceivers. By using the electronic signals they sent, the gear accessed the user's brain itself. The user's body was rendered useless – the sensory signals the Nerve Gear sent went directly to your brain. All five senses were accounted for – the only thing you wouldn't feel in the game was pain.

Half a year ago, this machine which started selling in may of 2022 successfully created a virtual reality. The electronics company which manufactured and marketed the device called the act of linking to this virtual reality a Full Dive. Being that it entailed a total seclusion from reality, the word 'full' fit rather well.

Because not only did the Nerve Gear send fake signals to the five senses and nullify your real ones. It also blocked and rerouted the orders that the brain sent to the body. The combination of these two things could be called the most basic requirement for moving around freely in a fully immersive virtual reality. If the body received the brain's signals while in VR, if they wanted to run, their actual body would run into a wall.

Because the Nerve Gear could reroute the commands the brain sent through the spinal cord, Klein and I could both move our avatars around freely and swing our weapons around. In other words, it was as if we'd completely leapt into the game.

The effect of this experience captivated me and many gamers like me, to the point where we would almost certainly never be able to go back to the touch pens, motion sensors and handheld controllers of the last era of gaming.

Klein just kept staring at the wind passing through the plains and creating waves in the lakes and the walls of the tower in the distance which connected this zone and the one beyond it with actual tears in his eyes. This experience seemed to have genuinely moved him, like it did me on my first day of the beta test.

"So GGO is the first game for the Nerve Gear you've played, I take it?" I asked him nonchalantly. I already knew the answer, so I wasn't very invested in the question.

Klein turned this way and nodded. His expression seemed to be going for calm and handsome, but the attempt was undercut significantly by his crude, punk-assed Mohawk, so instead he just looked really goofy, to a surprisingly amusing degree. I almost laughed, but I managed to suppress the impulse down to a mere smile instead.

Of course, this was probably completely different from his actual body in the real world. It was an avatar made out of complex data, created by choosing from list of options for each part of the normal human body. Naturally, I looked nothing like I did in real life, either, given that I chose to play as the opposite gender. I'd chosen features that made me look like a handsome if slightly effeminate protagonist from your average fantasy anime. Not any specific series, given that we'd never had a TV at home in the first place and I never became interested in any shows as a result, but just what I expected one's main male lead to look like.

As my thoughts reached this point, Klein began speaking in his low, vigorous voice, which was once again different from his real one. "Well, to be exact, I sort of bought the hardware in a rush after I managed to get my hands on GGO. There were only a hundred thousand in the first batch, so I guess I was pretty lucky… but come to think of it, you were ten times luckier when you got picked for beta testing. They only picked ten thousand!"

Here I found myself at a crossroad. Should I tell him I was scouted and risk him finding out who I really was and that I cross-played, or should I let him believe that I got the beta out of sheer luck so he didn't raise questions about it that I didn't want him knowing the answer to? One way was completely honest, and the other was deceptive in what it didn't say… and I hated deception.

… But in the end, I hated the treatment that comes with being a known female gamer far more. "Yeah… I guess I really won the lottery. I heard that millions of people applied for the beta from all over the country and even a few thousand foreigners."

Klein kept staring at me. "How many zones did you clear in the beta?"

"The lead group successfully defeated seven checkpoint bosses, which counts as clearing that boss's zone, during the one month of testing," I answered before holding up my finger to convey that this wasn't the full story. "However, when the beta ended, a total of ten zones had been cleared, with the remaining clears coming from just one person playing solo. The game's top solo player got three zones cleared by himself, although the tenth took him a bunch of tries and he only beat it on the last day of testing."

It wasn't really a lie, but it wasn't perfectly accurate. The solo player who cleared zones eight, nine and ten may have played as a boy, but it was actually a girl. A fact which I knew for a very simple reason: it was me who did it. Although another slight inaccuracy of what I'd just said was the result of the battle on the last day of the test period. It had been a draw – the boss and I delivered the finishing blows to each other at the exact same time. The system judged that to be a victory, but for me, the outcome wasn't good enough. Not that any of this was Klein's business to know…

"Whoa! There was a solo player strong enough to solo checkpoint bosses?!" he exclaimed, completely unaware of what I'd just been thinking. However, his next sentence almost made me question that. "That is some hardcore shit…"

Well, he wasn't wrong. Even if you were in the zone boss's level range or higher, most of them had not only intelligent AI, but also either constantly spammed powerful moves or attacked with ranges and speeds that made evading require a near instant reaction speed combined with knowledge of the direction of every hit in the combo. It was something which made soloing them on the first try impossible – I'd been beaten by every single one of the bosses I'd soloed at least once. Although for the last one, I got beat once or twice for each combo he had.

Or to put it as succinctly as possible… "Damn straight it's hardcore. And even that word doesn't do it justice."

To be completely frank, I didn't really get along with people in real life. I never minced my words even slightly, whether I was criticizing someone else of myself, and so I naturally made a lot of enemies with the things I said to and about people with no hesitation. In games, I got along with people even less, although for different reasons – in games I just didn't bother associating with anyone I didn't need for something. During GGO's closed beta, I got to know a couple people, but I didn't get close enough to anyone to actually call them a friend.

But the player sitting next to me had a side to him that was undeniably growing on me, and I didn't find being with him uncomfortable, either. If it was him… I might be able to get along with him just fine, enough to call him a friend.

"So anyway," I spoke after a few moments' silence. "What do you want to do? Should we keep hunting until we level up? We're both really close at this point."

"You bet!" he replied with a big smile before his eyes darted to the bottom right corner of his vision. He must have been checking the time. When his eyes returned to meet mine again, his smile turned somewhat bashful. "… Is what I want to say, but… I gotta log off and eat. I'm starving!"

I nodded in understanding. "Yeah, I get you. Eating in game only makes you feel full IRL. Better not to do it unless you don't give a damn about your physical body's health."

He flashed me an energetic thumbs-up with his left hand. "I know, but I prepared ahead of time! I ordered a hot pizza for five thirty!"

"Someone's pretty thorough," I replied, my voice just a few notes off from being sarcastic.

 _Why is it that I can't talk to someone for ten minutes without being snarky or condescending? This is why I don't have any friends…_

I did my best to ignore that nagging voice at the back of my head. It always chimed in with criticism whenever one of my less normal traits reared its head. It wasn't a literal voice in my head so much as the manifestation of my own self-loathing which I'd had ever since the event which caused my family to have to move. Well, chain of events, anyway. One that I had no intention of ever reliving.

Klein's eyes lit up as he proudly thrust out his chest, blissfully unaware of my own inner self-deprecation. "Of course! Once I've eaten, I'll be back."

I nodded and gave him a thumbs up of my own. "Not sure where I'll be when you're done, but if you still want some pointers, message me when you log on again and I'll meet you halfway."

 _Why can't I just admit that I want to hang out some more? I just had to make it sound impersonal, didn't I? Wouldn't want the guy to think that I like spending time with him or anything!_

Once again, my inner critic did what it does best. And yet again, I simply pretended it didn't exist. And once more, the guy sitting next to me remained completely unaware of it. He nodded and got to his feet with a big, goofy smile on his face that seemed to project the opposite mood his large red Mohawk did.

"You bet I will, you're amazing!" he exclaimed, his grin widening. "Hey, I promised to meet with some friends I know from another game in a bit. Want to friend them, too?"

I froze as my gaze shifted to the ground instinctively. I got along with Klein pretty well, but there was no guarantee that it'd be the same for his friends. Given my track record, I likely wouldn't get along with them. And if that happened, a falling out with Klein would be inevitable.

But when I looked back up at him for a fleeting moment, he seemed to understand why I hesitated to accept his offer. He shook his head and gave me a reassuring grin. "If you don't want to, that's okay, too. You do give off that solo player vibe. I can introduce you some other time."

"… Yeah," I offered with a nod. "Sorry… and thanks."

As soon as I finished talking, he shook his head vigorously. "Hey there, I should be the one thanking you! You taught me everything, from aiming to weak spots to efficient drop farming methods! I'll pay you back sometime soon. Mentally."

As he smiled at me, he flashed me another thumbs up before taking another look at the clock. "Well, I better get going. Thanks a lot, Kiriko. Be seein' ya."

With that, he extended a hand out to me. In that solitary moment, a single fleeting thought flashed through my brain. For all intents and purposes, the person standing in front of me had all the makings of a fine legion leader. I was sure that he and his friends would become a powerful group as the game went on. I shook his hand with a small hint of satisfaction that I got to help someone like him on his first day.

"Yeah," I nodded with a small smile of my own as I let go of his hand. "I'll see you around."

Klein stepped back a bit, put his right index finger and thumb together, and pulled downwards. This action opened his main menu window. Even though we were in a party, I wouldn't be able to see it – the only way to see someone else's menu was if you shared storage with them, which was something the game reserved for people especially close to one another… and married couples. Even so, I could still hear the ringing SFX which signified his menu opening.

I walked over to a nearby large, ovular rock jutting out from the grassy plains and sat down on it before opening up my own window as well. I started moving my fingers to organize the items we got from the rare coyote mobs. I knew I'd gotten more than just a single handgun from farming those things – I'd gotten more than one, and their stat rolls weren't exactly equal. But they'd also dropped something a lot more valuable – one of the top tier drops on the first zone, a pair of gloves which had the bonus effect of adding an extra skill slot, which would allow me to pick up an extra skill tree to level as I progressed through the game. As soon as my pupil logged out, I planned to equip them and make a beeline for the next spot on my agenda for day one.

But at that point, I wouldn't get the chance. That was the precise moment in time when GGO, or «Gun Gale Online», stopped being just a fun, fully immersive game for me and Klein both.

"That's weird…" my first friend in the official release spoke in a strange tone, scratching his head with his left hand. "What's up with that? There's no log out button."

* * *

 **Author's Note**

 **The more observant readers may notice that a lot of this chapter was based off of light novel volume one's corresponding scene. I tried to edit it to match my voice, but considering I often have a hard time telling what my voice as a writer actually is, I don't know whether it really fits my usual style or not. Don't get me wrong, I know I'm a better writer than Kawahara was when he wrote that book, but… well, using the same general structure he did provides a good baseline and keeps me from needing to come up with stuff on my own, which can be a real time saver. Believe me, the main reason GGO SW's updates stopped back in March was because I could not for the life of me figure out how the fuck to start the second scene, a hurdle I have only just recently tackled.**

 **I like to think I made the dialogue more believable, though. And as far as I can tell, I kept everyone in character, although it's a bit of a small feat considering there were only two characters in the chapter to begin with. I'm gonna say this is probably mildly better than light novel volume one's equivalent scene, or at the very least better than the fan translation I used as reference material, considering I was actively trying to improve on that scene, give it my voice and make it different enough to be eye catching.**

 **Another thing that's at least worth mentioning: this chapter did a mild retcon on a specific event. I don't remember if I ever even posted anything with the original way it went explained in it, but in the original backstory, Kiriko never won against the checkpoint ten boss, Vice, in the beta test. However, in this version, she had a draw with him on the last day, which the system counted as a win, but she personally counted as a loss. It was more of a whimsical retcon than anything else, but considering how small of an impact this will have on the story itself long-term, I decided to leave it in.**

 **That's about it. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got another story to update which has also been done for quite a while. See ya next time!**


	5. IV: Game Breaker

**Author's Note**

 **So I was originally going to have my cover artist and editor do some QC on this chapter before releasing it, but she has like a million different things to do these days, so I had to resort to editing the fucker myself. Not as effective, to be sure, but at least it's better than just doing nothing…**

 **Hopefully now that the original GGO SW is on hiatus, I'll be able to release chapters for this rewrite a lot faster. I've been wanting to catch up by at least a few arcs before I get back to writing original GGO SW part two. We'll see how it turns out** **…**

 **Anyway, go ahead and read. Catch you down below!**

* * *

Gun Gale Online: The Swordswoman

Director's Cut Edition

Chapter Four: Game Breaker

* * *

 _But at that point, I wouldn't get the chance. That was the precise moment in time when GGO, or «Gun Gale Online», stopped being just a fun, fully immersive game for me and Klein both._

 _"That's weird…" my first friend in the official release spoke in a strange tone, scratching his head with his left hand. "What's up with that? There's no log out button."_

* * *

As soon as I heard this, I immediately exited my inventory and went back to the main menu to check for myself. It wasn't that I didn't trust the guy, but he didn't exactly strike me as the most detail oriented kind of person… so there was a good chance he just missed.

As soon as the main menu's long row of buttons replaced my inventory window, I moved my hand down in a movement that had almost become second nature to me, and at the very end of the list, I found…

My body froze as my mental processes came to a screeching halt.

It wasn't there. It was just as Klein said. The button that had been there during the beta test period – hell, even right after I logged on if I were to venture a guess – had disappeared. I stared at the empty space for a couple of seconds before scanning the rest of the menu, making sure it hadn't just changed positions, but much to my chagrin, the menu's original order had been left intact, sans the one missing button.

"You're right… I don't see it either," I replied as if I'd seen a ghost. I had a bad feeling about what this might mean…

It wasn't as if there was nothing in place of the button which had gone AWOL. No, far from it. There was a button there, all right. But the button… it was completely blank. And as I'd just confirmed, touching it didn't do anything. It was almost like…

 _It's like it's a feature built into the game… but that can't be right, can it?_

"Well, I mean, this is day one of the retail release, so these sorts of bugs aren't exactly unheard of," Klein responded in a jovial manner, making it clear he hadn't thought this issue through. "I betcha the GMs are going crazy from the number of messages flooding in!"

I shrugged my shoulders before pointing over at him with my free hand. "You sure you want to treat this so casually, buddy? Because I mean, if I were the one with a pizza delivery coming in five minutes, I'd be flipping out over this, too."

I went back to my inventory with a smile as I watched him jump around, wide-eyed, at the realization that he'd be missing out on a meal if this wasn't resolved quickly. I threw away a couple of items I didn't need to make sure my inventory stayed well under my weight limit so I could fight without an Agility penalty before walking over to my friend just as he began shouting his grievances at the top of his lungs.

"Come on, why does this shit always happen to me?! My anchovy pizza and ginger ale are as good as gone now, this is just my damn luck!"

Setting aside his questionable taste in pizza and soda, I patted him on the shoulder to get his attention before bringing him back to reality. "Screaming about it isn't going to fix the problem for you. Call a GM. They could cut you off from their end."

"I already tried, but no one's picking up, it's like all the staff went AWOL!" he countered, something in his response setting me on edge. "Kiriko… total newb question, but is there any other way to log out?"

After listening to his question, my building anxiety suddenly spiked, and my breath hitched. I knew the answer without even having to think about it… and that answer suddenly felt frightening, its weight making me feel like I might choke on the virtual air around me.

"No…" I replied in a hollow voice, giving it my all to force the words out even though I could barely breathe. "Nothing but the menu. That's always been the only way to do it yourself unless you have developer mode access."

Klein's frenzy quieted down in an instant as he looked at me with an annoyingly curious expression. "Wait, how do you know developers had other ways?"

What I'd been referring to was a feature in a special access submenu I'd had which I'd found on my first day of logging on with my developer account in the beta. If you turned it on, the Nerve Gear would automatically keep track of the time you spent logged in, then kick you from the game server for the day after you'd been logged on a full collective eight hours. Supposedly it was because game staff didn't get paid overtime for test work, so I'd turned it off immediately since I wanted to sink as much time possible into playing the game.

 _Not that Klein here needs to know anything about that… I had enough people lambaste me for my developer access in the beta to last a thousand years, anyway._

"That doesn't matter right now, and more importantly, it wouldn't have helped us even if we had it," I told him, shaking my head for emphasis. "The developers feature which could have auto kicked us would've only activated after eight hours straight of playing. We've been logged on since one PM, and it's only five-thirty or so right now. We're still three and a half hours short of the prerequisite. By that point, your pizza would've been long gone."

Klein's eyes lit up, and before he even spoke, I knew it was gonna be something totally stupid. "What about turning the power off or pulling the—"

"Klein? How do you think we can move our bodies in this virtual environment without physically messing with a controller or keyboard?" I cut him off before I got a nosebleed out of the sheer level of stupid he was forcing me to put up with. "The «Nerve Gear» intercepts every signal your brain sends to your body except the ones that keep automatic processes like breathing and your heartbeat going. We're all basically paralyzed while we're logged in, the commands to move our bodies move our avatars instead."

He quieted back down immediately, seemingly stunned by the taser that was the cold reality for everyone in the game. Probably also because I sounded more than a little irked at him, being on the verge of an anxiety attack myself and rather lacking in patience for stupid shit as a result.

"So then… unless someone fixes the bug," he started, looking as if he didn't want to agitate me any further. "Or someone IRL takes our Gear off, we have to wait it out?"

I nodded, a pit forming in my stomach as I made a crucial realization. "Yeah… but I'm pretty sure that if it were really a bug, they would've already taken measures to log everyone out until it was fixed."

Klein gave me a strange look. "Why would they do that?"

"Think about it. This game's stock sold out. There were a hundred thousand copies in total. That's not a small amount of people," I explained, my voice gradually riling up as I considered something which wasn't even really the worst case scenario. "That's around a thousandth of Japan's total population who are stuck here right now. Tomorrow is a work and school day. Even if you assume only half of them have jobs, which wouldn't make much sense given how expensive the Nerve Gear is, even if GGO was fairly cheap, if this were a bug and it was allowed to be continued for even a solid 24 hours, it would have a pretty large effect on the overall workforce."

Klein seemed to follow along closely throughout my explanation. Then, the moment I mentioned that tomorrow was a work day, his eyes lit up, and he seemed to see where I was going with this. The moment I finished talking, he connected the dots on his own and spelled it out.

"Shit, you're right… a lot of people might lose their jobs over that…" he said, before his face paled, his eyes going wild. "Shit, I live alone and my boss is a prick! If this bug doesn't get fixed today, _I'll_ lose my job! No one would remove the Nerve Gear for me and I'd miss over half a day at work bare minimum!"

… Well, that was a misjudgment on my part. I _really_ didn't want him to start freaking out again when I was on the verge of doing it myself. I had to change the topic somehow… "I have a mom and a sister, so they should notice and remove my Gear before dinner time… if you don't live too far, I might be able to—"

I was cut off by the sudden feeling of Klein's rough hands grasping my shoulders and shaking me like a ragdoll. I let out a startled squeak which sounded almost feminine, even in my stock male avatar creation character voice, much to my chagrin, but he didn't seem like he was even paying attention to it.

 _Safe… for now._

"You have a sister?!" he nearly shouted, brimming with excitement and… enthusiasm? Was that the right word? "How old is s—"

This time, I was the one to cut _him_ off… with an uppercut to the balls which literally sent him flying. He fell flat on his ass into the grass, clutching his privates as if he were in actual pain. "Ack, what the hell?! That hurts, asshole!"

 _He's acting like it actually hurt him… but you shouldn't feel pain in GGO… maybe he's just imagining it. Regardless—_

I grabbed my photon sword, unhooked it from my belt, and tossed it through the air to make a show of it before catching it and putting my thumb on the activation switch. "Try and make an advance on my sister again and find out firsthand what it feels like to get decapitated by a sword that cuts by _burning_ , we clear?"

"C-crystal… yeesh, didn't figure you for the overprotective type, man…"

I sighed, hooking my photon sword back onto my belt before crossing my arms in front of me, absently taking note of the fact that my folded arms had subconsciously settled just below where my chest would've been if I had my real body instead of this male avatar, before raising up slightly. I could've just been imagining it, but I felt my shoulders automatically relax at the gesture, even though this avatar didn't actually have my real life cow udder breasts weighing its shoulders down… guess it was a reflexive sensation, psychological as much as it was physical.

"It's what older siblings are for," I told him, careful not to slip up and say 'sisters' instead of 'siblings.' "No offense, you seem like a decent guy, but… I have no idea who you are, nor how old you are… and your mohawk doesn't exactly inspire confidence in me about trusting you with personal info, dude."

Klein's expression became fierce as he continued to clutch his groin, glaring back up at me. "I picked it because designing my avatar was taking too long, give it a rest already!"

Well, such a claim might actually be credible… but if he was telling the truth, then he was the most rush happy guy with avatar creation I'd ever run into in GGO, retail and beta alike. The mohawk was indeed the first male hair option, and the one which was selected by default. But the hair option I had was literally the next option in the list, so if he'd scrolled over even once, he'd have found something which looked _significantly_ less trashy.

"Your stupid hair aside, don't you think this whole situation is weird?" I decided to throw him a lifeline, bringing his attention back to the problem at hand.

"Well, duh," he answered, still sounding a little testy after all the shade I'd thrown at his hair today. "It's a bug. Weird is in its job description."

I shook my head, pinching the arch of my nose for a minute to help me bite back a snarky comment or two I had in reserve. "Not necessarily, but whatever. It's not just a potential bug. It's a potential bug which prevents players of a «Full Dive» VR game from _logging out_. It's a big enough problem to bother the operation of the game itself."

"Be more specific about what you mean," he requested, his voice alone conveying his confusion without me even looking at him.

"Let's take your pizza as an example. If you paid for it beforehand, then it's just sitting at your doorstep, getting colder every second," I started, the hand on my nose pinching harder to help keep me from snapping. "And if you didn't pay for it beforehand, then the pizza place you ordered it from have probably already eaten the loss of time and labor of making the pizza and gone back to work, and you are now without dinner IRL. Either way, that alone is an actual economical loss, right?"

I closed my eyes to hide the annoyance in them as he made the snide comment, "Cold pizza… yeah, talk about worthless all right!"

 _Just ignore him, just keep going with your point…_

"Like I said before, if this were an actual bug, then they'd have already taken measures to log everyone out while they fixed it," I repeated myself, my eyes opening again and gazing out at the rainbow sunset which somehow seemed almost ominous now that my thoughts had been colored with such darkness. "For example, if they shut down the server, we'd all be logged out automatically. But… it's been over ten minutes since we first noticed this problem, and in that time, what have GGO's staff done to remedy or even address it?"

Klein's eyes widened as he considered it for only a moment. "Nothing… no one has done anything about it."

"Exactly. No server shutdown, not even a system message to tell us they know it's happening and are working on a fix," I affirmed his conclusion, watching his face don a serious expression which really didn't fit well with his stupid hair.

He rubbed his chin, almost as if stroking a beard he didn't actually have, and his eyes shined contemplatively. "It's out of character. The company that created GGO, Argus, is a company that's famous for being considerate of its users, right? The crazy ass queues at stores and online copies selling out in seconds despite there being a hundred thousand copies available speaks for itself about their rep. For a company like _that_ to screw up and handle it like _this…_ "

I nodded. Looks like he was starting to catch on… guess he wasn't beyond salvation after all. "My point exactly. Adding onto that point, this is also the first VRMMMORPG. If something goes wrong this badly now, the government might pass regulations for the whole genre. How Argus handles this will probably have lasting impacts on the entire VR gaming industry, and they're totally blowing it."

I looked back out at the sunset again, watching the sun creep a little lower, and I had to fight back the urge to shiver in the growing cold. Zone one's seasons and climate were based on the real Japan, so it was autumn here as well… but somehow, I got the sense that the chills I was suddenly getting weren't entirely thanks to the lowering temperature. To steady my nerves, I took a deep, cold breath—

Which immediately hitched in my throat as I heard a familiar, yet sinister sound emanating from the direction of the «SBC Glocken». Not just any sound, either; it was a warning tone. If this was them addressing the problem, then picking this tone to start with… meant that something must've been really bad about it.

All the more fuel for the growing fire pit of dread once again forming in my stomach.

I turned to Klein, who had forgotten about his pain and hopped to his feet, and for a solitary moment, our eyes met and I registered the alarm on his face, clear as day. "What's this?!"

Right after he finished talking, two pillars of clear blue light engulfed us. Past the thickening blue veil, the plains in my vision blurred steadily, until I couldn't even make out Klein, standing right in front of me.

I recognized the effect immediately – it was identical to item-induced teleportation. But I didn't have any of the prerequisite items to make use of it, nor did I shout the proper command, which could only mean that someone among the staff initiated a forced teleport. But why do that without even giving us a warning message beforehand…?

 _Almost strikes me as something Kayaba would do…_

Little did I know just how spot on my prediction would be.

* * *

 **Author's Note**

 **This was a short chapter, if you didn't notice. Expect the next one to be longer, and for the Day One Arc to conclude either next chapter, or the one right after.**

 **On that note, who else is eagerly awaiting the point in time where this story gets back to the present and I start reconstructing the premise behind the original GGO SW's part one? I for one am looking forward to scrapping the majority of the first ten cringetastic chapters of original SW in favor of a completely new storyline which makes use of the actors on the stage in an entirely different way. Plus, I also intend to do this rewrite in a similar manner to TB in that I intend to fill all the short timeskips in GGO SW part one with actual content to justify the relationship progression of the characters involved (especially for Sinon), so there's that to look forward to as well.**

 **Anyway, not much else to say, really. I'm gonna get started on the next installment, so I'm gonna cut this author note off here.**

 **See you next time!**


End file.
